


Church of Misery

by TenWoolf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Barrett!Isaac, Bite Time fest, Bitetime, Boyd is the little woman at home, Co-authored by LouisianaSkies, Derek Hale is Missus Lovett, F/F, F/M, Graphic depictions of star wars mugs, Gun Toting Erica, Hospitals, M/M, Malia and Kira are backseat buddies, Mention of Death, Miss Cleo!Lydia, No Major Character Death, No depictions of death, Poet!Isaac, Scott McCall;Federal Booby Inspector, Stiles Stilinski; not a horrible cop, Strong Language, alcohol mention, backseat cuddles, cop on fbi agent banter, filmstudent!Kira, mention and some violence, mention of murder, no minor character death, overzealous use of prose, puns, slightly amoral con-artist Malia with a heart of gold, some sections feel like cotton candy tastes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-02 23:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4077895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenWoolf/pseuds/TenWoolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Last night another body was found just two hours south of the news station on the banks of the Green River. The body was that of 26 year old, Kelly Frances, who was studying for a degree in education and was planning to go on to teach for her alma mater, Beacon Hills High School.  As our viewers know, over the last few months murder rates have been on the rise in the area and now police may have found a pattern..."</p><p>Sheriff Stiles Stilinski has a lot on his plate with a string of recent murders so he calls in old pal and FBI agent, Scott McCall, to help unravel the mysteries of the Green River killer. </p><p>Meanwhile the killing spree has caught the attention of Kira and Malia, a starlet and a film director trapped in the bodies of two high school seniors from California who set out on a road trip to find their fame in a documentary. The pair find themselves waist deep in the waters of the crime and just might be in over their heads.</p><p>Based on the Lifetime Movie "The Capture of the Green River Killer" for Bite Time Fest!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Long Road Ahead

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there, hi there, ho there. So this'll be updated like every....twoish? Threeish? Y'know what, let's not even pretend we'll stick to a schedule. Updates are the yeah doing that.
> 
> DISCLAIMER; So, just as a warning, this fic doesn't include any graphic violence or depictions of sexual violence. There is some mention of violence through police reports but it is minimal. Stories centered around murders tend to be pretty violent so we wanted to shy away from that given it's a work related to an actual serial killer. There's no mention of the original victims or the actual GRK. So if you were worried about that, well hey, worry no more, friend.
> 
> This is for Bite Time Fest! Check out the collection for tons of other super cool Life Time movie fics.  
> Written between LouisianaSkies(lovingly referred to as Pizza) and myself, we're going on like 120 combined pages of google doc writing and planning. This was like, so damn much work and it's been freaking incredible, man. Pizza is responsible for the trials, troubles and tribulations of Scott and Stiles while I did the car ride cuddles between Kira and Malia.
> 
> For the fic we've got some accompanying playlists so check out the first one, curated by Pizza. [Take a listen!](http://8tracks.com/pizzabroskies/church-of-misery) All chapter titles are taken from songs from the playlist so yeah.

A brunette woman in a plum blouse straightened the papers in front of her and looked straight forward. Her image flickered slightly. 

“Thank you, Jim. Last night another body was found just two hours south of the news station on the banks of the Green River. The body was that of 26 year old, Kelly Frances, who was studying for a degree in education and was planning to go on to teach for her alma mater, Beacon Hills High School. As our viewers know, over the last few months murder rates have been on the rise in the area and now police may have found a pattern. I hate to say it, Donna, but it looks like we might have a serial killer on our hands.”

The lady in yellow, Donna, nodded grimly. “It would seem so, Karen. Now the police aren’t releasing any details on how the body was found or the state the body was found in….”

The screen flickered off with a click.

  
Well, take me back down where cool water flows  


Sheriff Stiles Stilinski paced in his office holding his spool of red yarn or as the deputies liked to call it ‘the mystery string.’’ He paused momentarily to glare at the pile of papers on his desk. Maybe if he stared at them long enough they’d disappear on their own. Instead of taping another picture onto the cork board behind him, he turned and sat down hard in the chair behind his desk. Stiles spun his chair around in a slow circle and picked up his phone to dial his best friend. His leg bounced nervously as he listened to the dial tone.

“Hey Scott.” Stiles sighed into the phone. He pushed aside some papers on his desk, attempting at some sort of order to the chaos.

“Tough day?” Scott laughed. Stiles could hear a faucet or a door squeak in the background and briefly wondered what the FBI agent does with his day. He sometimes imagined Scott sitting behind a nice desk in a big DC office or on a job in New York City, maybe Miami or some other large city, canvassing some crime or another.

“Horrible. We found another body in the Green River.” Stiles leaned back in his chair, winding a red twine around his index finger. He held the spool in his hand, pulling the twine tighter and turning his fingerprint to an unhappy purple. He had all the intentions of mapping out a current case, but had called Scott instead.  


“What?! Dude, you used to be ecstatic over finding bodies! Remember Laura Hale?”  


“We were sixteen, bodies were fascinating in general” he chuckled to himself, the first time he had cracked a smile in two days. Stiles unwound the red string from his finger, placing it down on his desk with the resolve that talking this out with Scott was a bit more important for his sanity than trying to connect pieces of a crime spree with red string. “Thought you’d find this one interesting, though. Remember a while back? The MO of that serial you were assigned to? Exact same.Bodies are being found near the river. There’s already a lot of calls coming in from panicked college kids being paranoid about all the construction work on the dorms that’s going on, now I’ve got bodies turning up!” 

“Could just be a copy cat.” Scott’s voice came through the speaker, optimism seeping through the line. Stiles could picture Scott shrugging and trying to maintain a grin on his dopey puppy-like face. He had no idea how Scott was ever taken seriously in the FBI with such an innocent puppy face.  


“No, buddy, you don’t get it. Exact. Same. Aspects about the crime scenes and the bodies that were never released to the public are matching up, that kind of same. Like the hair parting thing.” Stiles dragged his hand down his face and sighed.  


Stiles could hear Scott chewing on his lip, a nervous habit he could hear miles away by the change in Scott’s breathing.“I’ll let my director know that he’s at it again and I’ll be out there tomorrow.” There was a beat of silence before Scott took a deep breath and spoke again. “You know, I talked to him pretty recently. Couldn’t pin anything on him that time though, so we had to let him go. He’s good, Stiles, really good. This won’t be easy.”  


“You better hope he’s getting sloppy then. It needs to be stopped.”  
Scott sighed but didn’t say anything else, just the quiet hum of his agreement and chewed on his lip  


“It’s just all happening so fast, Scotty. And now it’s my job to handle it.” Stiles let out a sad sigh. 

“I have to handle it.”  


“I know, Stiles.”  


The last thing Stiles said was the dial tone, a gentle little click on his end. He tossed the receiver on to his desk and closed his eyes to try and make sense of all the nothing.  


  
___  


Some many miles away in his office, FBI Agent Scott McCall put down his phone. He hadn’t been aware that Stiles had ended the call until he heard the dial tone buzzing in his ear, he had been too busy staring at an old wanted poster of the man who started this all, allegedly anyway. Scott had to remind himself of that. The man from the case that haunted him in his sleep. While the law dictated that Peter Hale was innocent until proven guilty, Scott and Stiles had both known in their guts for a long time that he wasn’t innocent in the slightest.

Back when Scott was fresh from the academy, he had been put on his first assignment under his superior at the time, the murder of a young girl about Scott’s age at the time, maybe a little older. He was still green, unpracticed, and a little naive. When they caught the suspect, a man named Peter Hale who had supposedly killed the girl, a niece or something, Scott flubbed through the standard questions. He was too nervous, Hale was too cool and practiced. In the end, Hale had been sentenced to a few years on abuse charges, released under probation a few weeks after incarceration for good behavior, fully free from the system within a year. Scott kicked himself for not being able to lock him up for longer every day that he heard about another murder that fit the same MO as the girl. This time, Scott McCall wasn’t going to let the killer go free. Scott McCall was going to close this case. (details are sketchy/can be changed, just figured it was believable that Scotty would have flubbed, be upset about it, & out to set his mistakes right.)

  
No tomorrow, no dead end in sight  


A good memory was what put Malia through school and every teacher qualifying for assisted living will be there to tell her that. They'll say that memory was all that could put her through.  
But she didn't have a good memory, she had a perfect memory. Rhyme schemes were all she wanted to have in her head, the same kind of divine verses that put wordsmiths among the stars and history books. All that was real inspiring and perfect sounding, but Malia didn't really have the same sense and thoughts that she could fathom up and string together with participles and good syntax and all the fancy crap she studied as a kid. But, she had a perfect memory for divine phrases and that is how she met Kira.

All through high school, Malia kept begging the drama teacher to give up on the musicals and put forward some blissful Greek tragedies and pastoral comedies that could roll in her jaw like bubble gum. But bum towns with more trailer parks than government houses didn't wanna see stage literature, they wanted a good laugh and some inspiring story about gangsters or sing-song plays from kid's books.

And if it weren't for Kira Yukimura and her eccentric as Warhol film teacher, Malia would have gone down the pathway of obscure waitressing in bars and bbq shacks instead of the bubble gum soft world of bright starred actresses. Because even if she couldn't get up there amongst those history books she'd fall right next to the reference notes and page corners.

Kira was so much better than anybody Malia had ever met in their podunk excuse for a town. She was smart and thoughtful, prettier than any trashy mag model that got put up in the window racks of gas stations. She had fox blood in the lines of her fingerprints and left traces on undeveloped photographs.

They traded all the silly things that children did when they weren't too old to be adults. Malia left notes in books and lockers, remembered stupid dates, and called in the low hours of the night just to hear Kira breathing. She followed her around like a puppy, dreamy eyed when she was around but snarled like a dog at anyone else. When she kissed Kira for the first time it was like diamonds breaking diamonds and then the soft little humbling clatters like music when Kira kissed her back.

Kira became the camera man, documenting their rambunctious lifestyle they had little to no control over with Malia as the starlet that lit up the footage. They made short films dedicated to dead poets and playwrights, Malia's voice the narrative that connected every scene from Marlow to de Lamos to Longfellow. The camera man and the starlet, all too excited to leave home for better things.

They thought they'd be going south, down through California where the golden dreams were shuffled in copper pans. But instead they went North, up through Oregon to the river that straddled Seattle. Malia had dreams that were carried in stanzas but Kira's were cautionary, horrific, and much more crowd pleasing. Kira wanted to catch the trail of a murdered and put it on her shiny black camera.

Two days after they graduated high school, prospects for Kira much more promising than Malia's, they took the dilapidated Sedan that Malia's mother couldn't drive and took it up the Million Dollar Highway. Fake ID's and the skills to flirt her way out of a ticket was what got them on their way, a small amount of money to buy cheap as candy gas and moth eaten sleeping bags to sandwich them at night.

Kira had heard about the Green River Killer when her mom fell asleep in front of the tv, too tired to close her realty notebooks and put herself to bed. The killer hadn't been identified, only a couple of leads that kept on leading nowhere were the highlights, and missing girls kept getting identified as dead girls. It was all perverse and surreal and ideal for film. Someone who wasn't keeping all the details on an outdated pc needed to document this for the public. Kira wasn't a journalist, she didn't need the truth. She needed it to be outside itself; to be seen, heard, and understood.

  
___  


Malia’s rickety old Sedan wooshed down the highway, pushing just over the speed limit, ignored by empathetic police officers. They were on a deadline, one body after another laid out on Kira's lap through scoured photocopied newspapers and printed out tabloids. She was making a harsh outline of the discovered victims of the Green River Killer, plotted out as good as she could with her highlighters and paperclips.

Malia drove them like bats escaping the River Stix, sipping cherry cola from a big gulp cooling in between her thighs. She didn't look away from the road very often. Just the occasional gaze and smile to Kira when she got too quiet or radiated stress. Most nights they slept in the car, curled up in the back wrapped in a sleeping bag, and Malia noticed when she kicked like a nightmarish dog.

"You doin' okay?" Malia asked eventually when she started seeing billboards again, signs that said they were close to the next town.

"Yeah…yeah," Kira nodded automatically, "this is all just a lot….to take in at once."

Malia looked over twice, kept her eyes fixed on the never ending blacktop, and grabbed the edge of Kira's stack of notes. She overturned at least two of the papers, a few others falling down between the seats. Kira protested, haughtily with a huff, and Malia entwined their fingers together.

"Take a break, it's been like four hours since we left Parkside. Play a game with me or something," Malia chided, pulling her in close with one hand on the wheel like it was glued to the vinyl.

"Fine fine," Kira gave in, leaning towards the driver's side. "Let's do, uh, the license plate game."

"You kinda have to have cars with license plates to play that. There was an Oregon plate about 35 minutes ago but I don't think that counts," Malia replied.

"Okay, maybe, Alphabet Signs?"

"Hmm, not many signs either; 65 miles till the next town."

"Really can't play much in a little car, sweetie," Kira said, then feeling the tickle of an epiphany in her head. "Wait, I know.."

Kira dug back behind her passenger seat, hidden underneath blankets and empty chip bags. She pulled out her camera bag, safely stowed away under the guise of useless linens and trash. She tossed the shuffled papers on her knees to floor with the rest and rifled through the bag in its stark black zippers and nylon for their most precious possession. A black film camera with a perfect moon eclipsed lens.

"Poet me," Kira said, looking to check the power and memory. Sinking back, she aimed the lens on to Malia, pushing back against the car door and resting her foot on the interior console.

Malia laughed, smirking like she didn't love the attention and shaking her head. "What do you want to hear?" She asked.

Kira clicked on record, the little red light blinking in her vision line while she watched from the view finder. "Who's that Uruguay lady you were talking about?"

"Augustini!" Malia exclaimed, biting her lip to remember what she'd read. "I will tell you the dreams of my life…On this deepest of blue night, in your hands my soul will tremble, on your shoulders my cross will rest.

"The summits of life are lonely," she snuck her hand down to Kira's ankle, grabbing it and slipping into her sock.

"So lonely! So cold! I locked my yearnings inside, and all reside in the ivory tower I raised. I raised!" She dramatically shook Kira’s like a bolt of electricity going through her fingers. all the while keeping one at ten on the wheel and never looking away from the road.

"Today I will reveal a great mystery, your soul has the power to penetrate me," she glided her grip up Kira's leg, denim getting in her way. "In silence are vertigos of the abyss. I hesitate…I am sustained in you…" she trailed off, turning her fingers upward in the crook of Kira's leg and tickling the back of her knee, a sensitive spot. Kira squirmed and squealed, folding into herself and accidentally switching to photo mode, taking three blurry pictures of the car interior.

Malia grinned and leaned in to her when Kira crashed in to her arm, burying herself beneath Malia's arms. "No tickling the driver!" She protested as the her hand slipped around wheel, fingertips losing traction, and Kira wrapped herself in to Malia’s stomach like it was a landing platform, blowing raspberries on the fat of her exposed belly. They stayed giggling, a mess of childish laughter.

They settled down, coming up on a long stretch of road. It was too smooth a road to do anything but feel like every bump was a junket. The eventual lazy radio buzzed in to a new station and pop music gently played.

  
___  


They covered more road in an hour than pioneers could in two days. The wasteland of Oregon stretched out like an apocalyptic ferry ground, the occasional farm dotting the countryside. Fields of corn plentiful and without the scent of harvest.

Malia felt like she had gulped an entire ocean of soda and can't keep twitching at the cherry cola making waves in her tummy, the mercy of tides slapping her stomach walls. She had to pee.

Kira made small talk, dedicated again back to the sprawl of lifted documents all in the right order. Her free hand had absentmindedly wandered over to Malia’s shoulder, lazily caught in her hair, an intimate curl of her finger in the light careless tresses. She could feel the constant bump of her shoulder against her hand but it was too amusing to bring attention to. Malia suffered in silence for most things anyway. She bragged in her excellence constantly and that was annoying.

Road signs kept getting more reasonable. 40 miles to Saint Everett, 20 miles to Saint Everett, entering Court County, 5 miles to next gas station. The glorious return of civilization was upcoming and it had an ivory throne.

Malia took the next exit when they finally crossed into rest-stop territory. A dilapidated old gas station, complete with a complimentary auto-body service center and petrol staining smell. The heat of sun soaked concrete radiated the smell of natural fuels like the perfume of a Dilophosaurus.

She pulled up to the front parking, checking the gas tank and hoping it wasn't at that age where it lied for no damn reason. "You want anything?" She asked Kira, who pulled off her seatbelt for the sake of comfort and locked her door for the sake safety. Reading about murders for hours on end kept your nerves on edge.

"Hmm, I'm feeling some gummy bears and OJ," she replied, smiling with teeth too white to belong to a delinquent. She put her feet up on the dash and sank in to her seat, watching Malia shut her door and walk in to the greasy windowed gas station.

The inside was all it was cracked up to be. A tiny store front complete with nudey mags in the front display and an array of diuretic coffee fixings to induce twitching. Malia looked around, searching for some kind of blue stick-figure-in-a-dress signage. A bored man with the a scruffy beard and pristine cliché overalls was watching her behind the counter. Watching not because she was too tanned to live north of California and had legs that wouldn't quit in cut off shorts, but because she was doing a very interpretive pee-dance. Much like an overactive puppy picking a fight.

Malia stared him down, judging back at his 'Al' name tag and mafioso facial hair. She broke it off, saying, "I swear I'm gonna buy like $10 in candy but first, I gotta use your head. Got a bathroom?"

Unperturbed, he picked up the forgotten base of a hammer with a key attached on a chain and waved it at her. "It's through that door. DON'T leave it in there," he said, waving to a red door opposite a soda fridge.

The other side just lead to a greasy hallway where the crown moldings were made of asbestos. The walls were bleak sheets of wavy metal that refracted the little rainbows of light that poured through rusted circles. The bathroom door was one of two, opposing sides and mostly identical.

She tried the first one, gingerly jostling the handle to see if it was open. It creaked forward and she cracked it open, carefully eyeing the inside of what looked like an auto shop. It was mostly empty, swinging tools following the breeze that creeper in from the open front huge pulls doors. It was illuminated by the natural light.

A rustling came from a far away office and Malia quickly shut the door with a quiet click. The door fanned her, thrusting a breeze that didn't smell like petrol or grease like she expected. It smelled of something she couldn't recognize.

She bounced over to the other door, knocking first out of a kind and unlearnable habit.

The bathroom was a rare kind of clean. Covered from floor to ceiling in chipping blue tile, a standard color out of cheap catalogues. It looked like it had been sprayed down recently, the edges of the grout damp and shiny. The overpowering scent of off brand pine sol lingered.

It was oddly relaxing but she still hovered over the seat and used her foot to flush.

Going back she forced herself to ignore the door to the auto shop. The smell bothered her, unable to place something that felt like it should have been obvious. Most of the men her mother dated were handymen or janitors or mechanics. It was an unspoken preference of hers to have someone who was good with their hands and fixed things compulsively. And they all smelled the same, grease under their fingernails and the distinct odor of apathy in the stains on their Henley's.

It bothered her, not knowing when she thought she should have.

In the gas station she picked up two $1.50 containers of gummy bear, knowing full well that when Kira said 'some' she meant 'too much of', and a few ice cold sodas from a leaking refrigerator.

Returning the bat sized key, she commented, "you've got like the cleanest bathroom I've seen in the past month." She threw down the bags and bottles clumsily, pushing them all together on the counter.

The cashier just smiled, unamused and bored as ever. He put down a magazine he had been reading, two stuffed inside each other to hide the fact that he was reading a Playboy instead of WWE Monthly.

"$5.54," he said ringing her up.

"Thanks... I've been on a road trip with my girlfriend for a couple days. We're going up to Washington," Malia said, taking the change he handed her and pocketing it in her cutoff shorts.

The cashier nodded, going back to his magazine.

"...So, you probably get a lot of those Green River tourists who wanna known about the murders?” Malia said, grabbing the bags and sodas that pulled all the heat from her hand.

The cashier gave her the side eye, not facing her but obviously intrigued.

"My girlfriend and I wanna poke around, maybe turn up so stones for a film we're doing. She’s the director, really good behind a camera," she shrugs and goes on. "It's how we met."

The cashier grunts, like a subtle chough, flipping through the magazine.

"We probably won't find anything but that's half the fun, getting to take the long drives in the summer. But she's pretty confident that we'll get some good footage, maybe a whole movie to show off. She knows more about all that industry and festival crap than I do," she makes a point, using one of the bottles like a teaching baton. Little fizzing bubbles formed at the top like bits of carbonated panic.

The cashier didn't reply in any way, continually flipping pages.

Malia took it as a cue to leave; running her mouth wasn’t as fun when she didn't elicit some kind of response.

On her way out she threw over her shoulder, "This month's spread of Legs has a lot better photos, by the way." She didn't look back to see his face but she hoped it got him a little riled.

Back in the car, Kira had found a radio station that played golden oldies, the low ambience of a "I Got A Man" settling as she tapped her foot to the repeating words.

Malia slid in and tossed one of the bags on her lap, putting the bottles in the cup holders and corralling the change out from her pocket.

"Bathroom clean?" Kira asked, tearing into one of the bags.

"Weirdly clean..." Malia replies. She puts the car in reverse, backing out of the spot. She put it in drive, racing out back on to the interstate.

"Watch it, Cowgirl," Kira said, spilling a few candies on to her lap and bracing her arm on the window. "Weird how?"

"It was...it had a weird smell to it. And it was top to bottom high pressure water clean," Malia explained.

"Maybe their janitor is a clean freak," Kira said, putting her focus into playing with her food.

"Maybe."

Malia put them in at a cruising speed, steering with her knees and leaning over to pull gummy bears from Kira's lips. They weren't far from Green River, no more than an evening's ride if they didn't stop until morning.

They'd sleep on the banks of the Green River, the lichtenberg scar runoff that twisted down out of Washington and leaked traces of itself over creeks and streams, emptying at the mouth of a lake that was as strange as the murders themselves.


	2. The Hour Will Tell You No Lies

 

**Time, sweet time;keeping me and mine**

 

Once Scott had settled everything with his superior and was granted clearance to leave, he set out for his old hometown to his best friend’s aid. The trip was long and tiring, but if you asked him Scott would have told you that he would go through nine circles of hell for Stiles Stilinski. Planes didn’t exactly agree with Scott’s career path, but they were a necessary evil when it came to timely travel. His gun was checked and rechecked at every turn and he had to wield his badge for everything. The security gave him shit over his lock box, even after he brandished his badge and pulled out papers telling them it was top secret case files not for civilian eyes. To spite him the security dumped out his entire set of luggage, which wouldn’t have annoyed Scott if he hadn’t meticulously crammed half his closet into a carry on to avoid checking a bag. It wasn’t like the agency would have paid for his checked luggage costs anyway, they hardly made space in the budget for his airplane tickets. Then on the plane there was a baby that wailed it’s lungs out in Scott’s ear in the seat next to him for the entire flight and an eight year old boy sitting behind him who kept kicking the back of his seat. But it all gave him a chance to think about his Chief’s words to him. Scott had been warned by him to not get too wrapped up in a vendetta against Peter Hale or to get too blind to the facts of the case. But the man, who understood Scott’s determination and need to help out someone so close to him, had sent him on his way with his blessing and a well wishes. He was practically buzzing in his skin with anticipation and anxiety, more than ready to compare his old files against Stiles’ new ones.

Scott was halfway to the police station to help Stiles sort through files when a rush of excitement hit him, replacing his earlier anxiety about the case. He was excited to get the chance to work with Stiles again. Scott’s train of thought was cut with the ringing of his cell phone. It took him a solid second to register that it wasn’t the generic ringtone of his work line, but the peppy punk rock ring of his personal phone, more importantly the peppy punk rock ring of Stiles calling. Scott picked up the call through the rental Honda’s bluetooth speakers with a grin on his face.

“I’m almost to you, buddy.”

“Well you won’t find me at the station.” Stiles’ tone directly contrasted the happy one of Scott’s. He deflated in his seat. “We’ve got another body.”

“Where.” Scott immediately sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and bit down.

Stiles’ voice lightened to a more relieved tone as he directed Scott to the location of the newest body, an offshoot of the Green River that wasn’t bigger than a creek and was popular with fishers and sometimes horny teenagers for it’s marginally secluded nature, promising he’d make up for it and fill him in more in depth on the files later that night with a round of Jack Daniels and burgers at his house.

Scott pulled up along the side of the road behind one of the many cop cars that littered the sides of the road, and followed the crime scene tape to Stiles. He dodged a few low hanging branches and upturned trees, following his senses to the secluded section of the river banks where the stream thinned to more of a creek status and fishermen liked to sit.

“LIAM!” Scott followed the sound of Stiles’ exasperated yelling. “Don’t trip over the body! You might contaminate the scene! You’ll have to rule your own prints out with CSU.”  
Scott bit back a laugh as he walked into the clearing

“Liam’s still giving you trouble?”

Stiles spun around, throwing his arms wide. “Scotty McHottie! I’ve never been so glad to see your dumb crooked face!”

Scott took in Stiles’ disheveled appearance. From the tired look in his eyes to the dirty jeans. Scott did a double take at his friend’s shirt, it wasn’t his usual Sheriff’s uniform. Scott silently raised an eyebrow and pointed at it. Stiles laughed nervously.

“It was my day off!” As if that was an excuse to be wearing a shirt that said “Female Body Inspector” in large bold print to a murder crime scene. “I-I thought it would be funny t-to…” Stiles sputtered, “be-because you… you’re… FBI…” Stiles trailed off lamely and hung his head a little, rubbing the back of his neck. “The call came through and I didn’t have time to change.”

Stiles looked around desperate to divert Scott’s focus. Thankfully, Liam stumbled again over a large rock and almost crashed into a sheet covered body, making enough noise over almost dropping his camera to get Scott’s attention. Stiles pinched the bridge of his nose but didn’t say anything to Liam.

“Is that the victim?” Scott nodded his chin at the sheet.

“That’s our Jane Doe.” Stiles nodded, rocking back on his heels. He motioned at the sheet with his hand and walked over, Scott following.

The pair crouched down at one end of the sheet. Scott glanced at Stiles for the okay to flip the sheet down, even though technically Scott was higher than Stiles, this was still his territory. Stiles nodded and Scott flipped down the sheet to reveal a the face of a red-headed girl, remains of thick remains of make-up smudged down her face. Scott didn’t want to say it outloud, not with the sound of cameras clicking in the distance behind them, but this girl wasn’t like the usual kill. She was messy and disheveled, not the usual clean and coiffed Scott was used to seeing.

The victim’s hair wasn’t neatly parted. Instead it was fanned out in a wet and knotted mess. The rest of the body appeared mostly dry, maybe a little damp. Scott didn’t want to uncover the body more than he had to, so he lifted the sheet a little to peer at the rest of the girl. Tight clothes. Her top was tight and short, showing off her abdomen, and she was either wearing a very tight skirt or a pair of shorts.

Instead of voicing anything, Scott covered the face of the girl up again, hiding her from the telescopic camera lenses that the press probably had pointed in their direction.

“So when is this going to be added on to the files?”

“As soon as someone like fuckin’ Tyler fills them out and we get a full report from CSU.” Stiles spat out as he pushed himself up to a standing position, joints cracking with the movement. “I’ll make sure to have a copy of it and Liam’s crime scene photos as soon as I can.” Stiles opened his mouth to say more but quickly closed it.

Scott slowly stood next to him. “What are you thinking?”

“It just doesn't feel like the same killer. She doesn’t look as put together as the other ones. The last girl was ID-ed straight off. No one knows who this is.”

“So DNA testing should be able to give some sort of marker to who she is.” Scott frowned at the body, he hated the idea of someone out there worrying over this dead girl.

“If we’re lucky they’ll hit a match that’s in the system, either for her or for a family member.” Liam butted in, crashing into Scott’s side. Scott grabbed hold of Liam’s arm to keep him from falling over or knocking into anyone else. Liam was nearly bouncing on his heels as he looked between Scott and Stiles. “Isn’t this exciting?”

Stiles pursed his lips at Liam. “Get back to work, Liam. This isn’t a field trip to a museum or some carnival.”

“I’m surprised.” Scott’s eyes followed Liam as he stumbled over to some other officers to take pictures of footprints or trash.

“At what?”

“How much he’s like us at that age. Excited. He hasn’t been hit with how heinous it all is yet.”

Stiles clapped Scott’s shoulder. “Still using those SAT words, eh buddy?”

Scott smirked, still looking off in the distance, his eyes caught on the old stone bridge that marked this body of water’s departure from the main river. He pulled himself out of his reverie. “Let’s get out of here. Let them finish this. We need to start going through the records.”

Stiles nodded,backing away from Scott. “I’ll go tell them I’m leaving. See you at my place, Scotty.”

Scott raised his hand in acknowledgement and turned for the trek back to where he parked his rental.

**\--**

Scott pulled up right behind Stiles in front of his house and proceeded to grab his lock box of important files and his locked briefcase from the backseat. He joined Stiles in the grass, where the Sheriff was holding a large office file box that didn’t look too heavy.

The pair made their way up the porch steps to the front door. Stiles fumbled with finding his keys while Scott leaned against the banister in slight annoyance.

“Stiles, you had your keys two minutes ago, you drove here.”

“I put them down to dig this box out of the trunk!”

“Please tell me that you did not leave them in the trunk.”

Stiles set the box down on the ground, patting down his pockets and then lifting the lid to the box. Scott’s head lolled to the side and he caught a slight glint of metal out the corner of his eye.

“Stiles. You’re an idiot. They’re on the roof of the cruiser.” Scott laughed.

Scott made a big show of waiting for Stiles to jog over to the cruiser and grab the keys, making sure he looked bored and irritated. He tapped the toe of his shoe loudly as Stiles unlocked the door, making his friend fumble and drop the keys several times in haste.

“Get in.” Stiles half-heartedly glared at Scott, shoving the front door open. “We’ve got a case to solve.”

Stiles placed the the box down on the dining room table with a dull thud and flipped open the lid. He reached inside and tossed half a dozen soft manila folders on the table.

“That’s all we’ve got. Reports on the last victim.” He reached inside again and tossed a few papers on the table. “Preliminary reports from the call we got about the body. Liam should be emailing me copies of the pictures he took any minute now, we can compare them to the ones from the last scene.”

Scott nodded and started taking out his own papers. “Let’s get started.”

Once Stiles had put in a delivery order for burgers and curly fries from Beefed-Up-Biscuit, the pair sat down to sort through the files. Stiles had left the kitchen to dig out a bottle of Jack from his stash and came back into the room pulling a well worn plexiglass board, much like the nicer one at his office.

“Dude.” Scott snorted when he saw the board.

“What?” Stiles set down the bottle of Jack, two shot glasses, and some markers that he pulled out of his pants pocket.

“The Babe Board? Now’s not the time for that. I’m not playing ‘who’s the hottest dead girl.’”

“I wasn’t… well I mean, technically I guess we are rating them, but…” Stiles trailed off, then shook his head as if shaking water from his ears and scoffed. “That’s not why I grabbed this, dude. I’ve got whiteboard markers. To write stuff down? Basic stuff and we can tape the pictures to the other side so we can write over them! It’ll be easier to spot a pattern.”

“Oh. Right. Good idea.”

Stiles picked up a blue marker and uncapped it with his teeth. “Okay. Who’s the first victim?”

“Uh… Laura Hale. That’s who we originally picked Peter up on.” Scott flipped through his files till he found a photocopy of Laura Hale’s missing persons photo and slid it across the table.

Stiles scooped it up and walked around to the back of the board to tape it facing Scott before returning to the other side.

“Okay. Laura Hale.” Stiles wrote the name under the picture in thick letters. “How old was she?”

“About 23. We could never get an exact age. We got birth certificate, driver's license, library cards and even a damn fishing license. Everything had different dates. But autopsy estimated 23.” Scott flipped through his file on Laura as he dictated it to Stiles.

Stiles wrote ‘23’ on a bullet point under her name. “Next.”

“More on her or next victim?”

“Next victim.” Stiles’ nose scrunched up as he turned to face Scott. “I have a feeling you know most of Hale’s facts by heart anyway.”

Scott made a face, but nodded and didn’t deny it. “Carter Turner, she was 19, 4.0 GPA in her freshman year on a music scholarship, found face down in a puddle of water in Illinois, on the banks of a river that passed near her college campus. Asphyxiation. No DNA found, but autopsy notes traces of spermicide were present.”

“Next.”

“Jane Doe #196, 21, brunette, studying nursing, found under a bridge a few months after Hale was let out of prison, Hale lived temporarily in the apartment complex a few blocks away, she went to the community college a block away from the bridge. Blunt force trauma. Crime scene contamination, no DNA logged.”

The back and forth of taping pictures and writing names and ages continued for a while. Scott would read out a name and fact list about the girls’ lives, appearances, and CODs, then slide a photocopy of a photo across the table. Stiles would tape the photo to the board and make some joke. Then they’d move on to the next folder. By the time they were done, Stiles had dug out a second board and the dining room table that they were working from was littered with Beefed-Up-Biscuit wrappers.

“Okay. so let’s look at this. What do they have in common.” Stiles stepped back from the board, a capped green marker in his hands now.

“Green?” Scott squinted at the marker in Stiles’ grip.

“Yeah. Green is for connections. Blue is for the facts that we know. Red is for oddities, like the proverbial ‘red flag’ type stuff. Purple is for theories. Yellow is too hard to see on this board, so is orange. So we’re not using those unless we have to.” Stiles shrugged. “Can we continue please? Similarities? Hit me.”

“All were found near rivers.” Scott offered up.

Stiles scribbled ‘water’ off to the side of the collection of pictures. “What else?”

“Uh. Well the age range seems to be 18-25.”

“That’s about college age right?”

“I think so yeah.” Scott nodded.

Stiles scribbled down the age range and added a note about college kids to the list, then he took a step back and surveyed the boards.

“They’re all brunette, except that one.” Stiles tapped the picture of the red-headed Doe from earlier that day, he had just printed it off from the email Liam sent. Then he tapped the picture of a blonde.

“And this one.”

“Outliers?” Scott sucked his lower lip between his teeth.

“Quit that.” Stiles waved his hand at Scott, not looking in his direction, and then bit down on his own thumb nail. “Brown is a fairly common hair color though right? Sort of like how brown eyes are a dominant trait? Might not mean anything. Just that there are more brunettes for the pickin’. Maybe the blonde bleaches?”

Scott remained silent for a beat, picking at a bit of dry skin on his lower lip. “Stiles, the redhead was a prostitute and the blonde didn’t have dark roots.”

Stiles whipped around to study the pictures of the blonde and the ginger. The blonde’s post-mortem photo was polished looking, clean and youthful, the ginger’s photo looked tired, dark colored under eyes that, this time, weren’t the product of make-up remains, she looked so tired that even in death couldn’t make her look peaceful.

“So what do we do?”

“Not sure there’s much to do right now. This new one, she could just be some one-off, but maybe there’s a second killer, one tail-gating on this other killer.” Scott shrugged, leaning back in his chair.

“We just have to wait and watch on that one. But we need to follow the leads. Whatever DNA, fingerprints, security cameras, and the like will give us for suspects.”

“And the press?”

“As little as possible.” Scott had handled a few high profile cases in small towns before, press was always sticking their noses in, making cases harder to work. “Say we’re following all available leads, that the details are being kept quiet because you want to respect the girl’s family but if anyone has any information regarding anything suspicious scene in the area to call in and report it.”

“I’ll hold it off as long as possible.” Stiles nervously tapped his marker to the table, immediately frowning when he realized that the marker wasn’t capped and had marked the table. He licked his thumb and rubbed it, not looking at Scott.“Give us some time to follow leads without civilians trying to help too much.”

 

 

**No Regrets, Coyote**

 

Kira had bright ideas all her life. Its what got her through school, what influenced her directorial view, and what sparked her interest in morbidity.

But her brightest idea would never compare to convincing Malia that she could pass as a prostitute. And it was Malia's brighter idea to talk her out of it.

"You're not going to be a hooker," Malia said.

"I could do it! I wouldn't BE a hooker, I'd pretend to a hooker. We know that the killer has been picking up girls our age," she argued.

"Lots of girls our age get picked up, men are disgusting," Malia said. She was spooning Kira in the back of the car, playing shirts and skins of sleep to find comfort in the bumpy back seats.

“It’s not that I even want to do it. I’m just so paranoid we’re going to get up there and not find anything,” Kira said, burying her face in the crook of Malia’s arm.

“It’d be easier just to not worry about that and enjoy the trip,” Malia muses, like it the easiest thing in the world to say.

“What if we don’t film anything good and we go home with nothing?” Kira asked.

“We don’t have nothing, there’s the stuff you took when I was driving and the first night. That’s not nothing,” Malia said, drawing with her finger on Kira’s arm in soothing little circles and loops. She connected all the soft shaded freckles absentmindedly, making constellations she didn’t know the names of. By the time they got near the city, they’d be out of stars. It’d be flood lights on the roads and street lamps paving their way.

“That’s private! I wouldn’t show that to anybody,” Kira exclaimed, remembering the shaking camera angle she held on their first night alone on the road. Each day, even with the window down to escape the fading California heat, the fragrance of that satisfaction didn’t leave the back seat. When she was walking around or flipping through pages of her book or the case notes, she’d remember the feeling of Malia underneath her palms and her fingernails. It was a kind of stability that calmed her, knowing that her ghostly sensation was always present and the physical gorgeous person was just an arm’s length away.

“I wouldn’t care if you did, you could probably do something with it,” Malia replied quietly, nearly mumbling it into Kira’s shoulder.

“I care,” Kira twisted her head to face Malia, bucking jawlines and rubbing noses, “I don’t want anybody thinking we’re entertainment. It’s just you and me, nobody else, okay?”

Their lips locked in a sweet kiss, habitual and smooth with the smack of tasting each other’s lip balm and chapstick. The discomfort of that back seat, fake leather and carpet lining sticking to their hips and shoulders, was surpassed by how natural it felt to locked in arms and coddled under a sleeping bag.

“Okay,” Malia said, satiated and sleepy. “Where do you want to head tomorrow, anyway?”

“I’m still not really sure,” Kira hummed, finding her hand on Malia’s elbow and dragging her nails up the length of her arm. “Maybe we can find the nearest town on the river instead of going up in to the city. I saw that we’re near a couple on the atlas, might turn up a lead or two. Maybe we can find some of the people who knew the women.”

“I can go that route...As long as you don’t try to be a hooker,” Malia chastised.

“Alright alright, you’d make a better one anyway,” Kira said before squealing out at the raspberries blown on her collarbone and neck, sticky lip marks of chapstick of invisible kisses on her skin.

 

**Same clothes, homegrown, a stone’s throw from a creek we used to roam**

 

Stiles tapped his finger nails on his desk nervously, or at least what was left of them. He hadn’t slept well the night before and had taken to biting his nails right down to the quick. Someone from the press should be in his office in no less than 5 minutes, and no more than 20 if he was lucky. Stiles didn’t really have a say in talking to the press today, he was just told that someone would be there to talk to him and get a statement to settle the public unrest. Despite his attempts to stall it out, saying he had investigations to deal with that were of the utmost importance, they weren’t hearing it. So,Stiles sat behind his desk, anxiously waiting, he was still bouncing leg several times. 

Stiles was impatient, he had people to interview, or at least he had to make it look that way. In reality, he needed to get back home and pour over those papers one more time to see if he missed anything crucial.

At 1:05 on the dot, the office door opened. Stiles looked up from picking at a bit of splintered nail on his pinky that he had been chewing on. To his surprise Allison Argent strode into his office in a deep blue business suit.

“Well, well, well. Ally-Ally Argent, ” A slow smirk made it’s way on Stiles Stilinski’s face.

“Sheriff.” Allison nodded with a slight roll of her eyes.  
Stiles hid his nerves well enough. Allison Argent was a shark of a reporter who could smell bullshit a mile off, the fact that they had gone to school together didn’t help matters. It meant that Allison knew all Stiles’ tells and his nervous ticks that would appear when he lied to her. Allison was usually sent to the front line of a story, whether that be standing out on the flooded Main St. in the center of a storm or on the steps of the state capitol during a heated trial. The idea that Allison had been sent to get his statement on the murders didn’t bode well with him, it meant that the case was hot and big and had high interest, maybe even a dangerous national level..

“So they sent you to get my statement?” It wasn’t a question, it was a way to distract Allison from the sweat that was slowly beading up under Stiles’ hairline.

“Little ‘ole me.” Allison nodded, pulling out a notebook. “So are you going to tell me the truth?”

Stiles shrugged cooly, clasping his hands and leaning toward Allison. “You know me well enough.” Under his desk his leg started bouncing again.

“So I shouldn’t get my hopes up then.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“I hear FBI has been called in?” Allison was baiting, she wanted to know if Scott was in town. She wanted confirmation.

“Are you asking as a friend or as a reporter?” Stiles countered, his leg bounced faster.

Allison chewed at her lip, clearly debating on which was more important, her need to know for herself or her need to know for her job.

“Maybe.” She said simply.

Stiles’ left eye twitched. That wasn’t an answer. Allison simply hid a smirk under the ruse of searching through her bag for a pen.

She clicked it and cocked her head at Stiles. “So, you have a generic statement prepared for me then?”

Stiles gave no indication either way but wore an unamused expression on his face. Instead he recited the spiel that he and Scott had put together the night before. That they were currently investigating the situation and following all leads, that details were being kept private out of respect for the victims’ families, and that if anyone has seen anything suspicious around the Green River to please report it. Stiles could tell by the look on Allison’s face as he recited his bit that she wasn’t buying it and knew it was rehearsed. When he finished she clicked her pen and shoved it in the rings of the notebook. Stiles calmed a little, pressing his heels down into the carpet. Looking up, Allison frowned at Stiles.Her head cocked to the side slightly as if considering something that she could read on Stiles’ face.

Finally, Allison sighed out, “you don’t have any leads do you?”

“I-I-I might.” Stiles stammered indignantly, then cursed himself mentally. Recomposing himself, he tried again. “We are currently looking into all available…”

Allison cut him off with a sharp look. “Stiles.”

“Look, Allison, we’re working as hard as we can here.” Stiles ran his hand down his face in defeat.

Her face relaxed, “have you talked to Lydia?”

Stiles face went a little red. “I don’t need to go running to Lydia every time there’s an issue with a case. In fact, I can’t. Confidential! I-I shouldn’t even be talking to you about this!” He babbled sounding on the verge of hysterical.

Allison raised a thin eyebrow. “Okay, but I think you could justify this one. After all, she is supernaturally gifted.”

“NONE of this ends up in the press, okay?” Stiles pointed a finger at Allison, remembering himself and her profession.

“All under the table. Friend to friend.” She held up three fingers, folding her thumb under her pinky in her palm, “Girl Scout’s honor.”

“I mean it Allison, I’ll have you arrested! For obstruction or slander or something!”

The look on Allison’s face said that she didn’t believe him, but she nodded politely and stood to leave, packing up her notebook as she walked to the door.

“Good luck, Sheriff. Sounds like you’ll need it. Call me when you want to release a real statement.” And with that she was gone. Stiles let out a breath and slumped down in his chair. His entire body jerked into motion. Grabbing his keys, Stiles hurried out of the station to find Scott.

**\--**

Stiles was sitting in his kitchen, nursing a bottle of tequila, when Scott McCall came barreling in like a hurricane. Stiles couldn’t even be bothered to wipe the forlorn look from his face as the FBI agent wheeled forward one of the crime boards and picked up a marker.

“Okay, so i might have hit a lead. Peter Hale has family around here. One of his nephews, I caught a whiff of him when I was surveying part of the river; the fishers wharf where we found the red-head. Very distinct smell of like, forest, that really strong body spray, and wet dog. Anyway, I followed the smell and caught sight of this guy going into a house out there in the middle of the woods.” Scott rambled excitedly with his back to Stiles. ”Well, maybe not the middle-middle of the woods, but it’s well hidden and surrounded by trees for at least an acre or two in all directions. So i figure we could pull up some records, look for matching last names or maybe the address of that place in the woods and see who owns it! Then i can hunt down the guy and tail him for a little while, see if he does anything suspicious, even something like not stopping for a stop sign, and cuff him. Bring him in for questioning and see what he knows.”

Scott pivoted to look at Stiles. The Sheriff hadn’t said a word to stop Scott’s ramble like he usually would have. “What? What happened?”

“Talked to the press today.”

“Oh?” Scott fully turned to face his possibly intoxicated friend, not seeing the big deal. “Great!”

Stiles went on, “Well, one journalist anyway.”

Scott quirked an eyebrow. He was starting to think that Stiles was very drunk indeed.

“Allison Argent,” Stiles sighed out, staring hard at the liquid in the bottle on the table as if he would suddenly become a waterbender and create a steady flow of the tequila down his throat.

“Oh!” Scott’s eyes widened. Maybe Stiles wasn’t drunk, but Scott could see why he wanted to be. Allison Argent had one hell of a radar for trouble and (even more hellish) for Scott.

“Mhmm.” Stiles hummed while blowing over the rim of the bottle to make it whistle obnoxiously.

Scott wildly shook his head like a puppy getting out of a pool, and cleared his throat loudly. “Well I, um, I hope you remembered what we talked about, you know, about what to tell the press.”

“Yeah.” Stiles waved his hand around in a circle, before Scott could breathe a sigh of relief Stiles continued. “But I don’t think she bought it. She told me I should talk to Lydia.”

“Maybe you should.” Scott shrugged.

Stiles rolled his eyes, his head lolling to the side. “Maybe I should have tossed you to Allison,” he muttered under his breath, but Scott heard it all the same.

Scott drew a deep breath in annoyance. “Sober yourself up. I might actually have a lead here, and we’re following it.”

Stiles grumbled a bit more under his breath till Scott decided to take matters into his own hands and forcefully take the tequila away from him, which naturally resulted in much louder incoherent grumbling. 

Scott thrust a cup of coffee under Stiles nose, taunting him. “There might be tequila in it.” Scott waved the mug under Stiles’ nose till the Sheriff grabbed it. 

“You suck.” Stiles sighed into the mug.

“Yeah. Okay.” Scott shrugged. “Now, tomorrow morning you’re going to talk to Lydia.”

“We.”

“We?”

“We’re going talk to Lydia.” Stiles took a long sip of the coffee. “There’s no tequila in this. I’m not going talk to her alone, buddy.”

Scott nodded, having no plans on joining Stiles either way. “Sure, dude. Whatever you say. And you’re cut off. No more liquor till after you...we... solve this case. First, we’re going to use your access to city records, and my access to national records to find this nephew’s name, place of residence, and where he works.”

“Fine.” Stiles half-slurred, reaching forward to grab his laptop off the table where it had been left after a long night’s worth of searching for leads. He was kicking himself in his haze that he hadn’t thought of searching for relatives of Peter Hale. Within minutes Stiles had it, simple as that. “Derek Hale. Residence:218 Redwood Road. Place of work: Bison Butchery, the Rosewood Shopping Center.”

Scott sputtered, looking up from his own laptop which had just finished booting up. “That easy?!”

“Apparently.” Stiles said dryly. He blindly grabbed at the spot where his tequila bottle had sat, forgetting that Scott had taken it away until his hand met air. Stiles pinched the bridge of his nose, a headache was already forming. “When are we checking this out? This guy’s in the system for some minor offense, we can dig out his file or something. Anyone can, you know, with the Freedom of Information Act. So hopefully no one’s already on him.”

“I’ll put a tail on him. Don’t worry about it.” Scott waved it off, getting up and closing Stiles’ laptop. “Go to bed. I’ll put in a call and then I’m turning in too.It’s been a long day.”

Stiles nodded, the headache was at full force now, pulsing behind his eyes. He allowed Scott to guide him to his room and possibly even into his bed, Stiles wasn’t sure. After helping Stiles into his bed, Scott went downstairs to put a tail on Derek Hale’s house till morning and do a little investigating on the guy himself.

**\--**

When Stiles woke up the next morning he felt disoriented, sad, and a little hungover. He worked himself up enough to get out of bed and take a long hot shower, momentarily having forgotten about Scott, the case, what he was supposed to be doing today; it all came rushing back to him in the middle of his second lather with his anti-stress soap. Stiles cursed loudly. He hurried through the rest of his routine and down the stairs, passing the front door just in time to see Scott walking through it.

“Uh, Scott?” Stiles took a step back, taking in Scott’s appearance. His friend’s clothes were covered in dirt, grass stains, and something that looked like mud but judging by the smell, it was probably excrement.

“Yep.” Scott nodded, as if it was ever day that he showed up looking like he did currently.

“Went for a roll around on a farm? Or the neighborhood dog kennel, maybe?”

“Right. I’m going take a shower.” Scott skirted past Stiles, dodging the question. “Be ready to head out in ten. I’m driving!”

Stiles groaned and headed into the kitchen. The mug he half-remembered drinking from the night before was sitting on the cabinet, a glaring reminder of the night before. Stiles grabbed it to flush out what was sure to be separated coffee grinds lingering at the bottom. Instead of a splattering of black particles, when he overturned the obnoxiously colored mug, the sink splashed with clear liquid. He leaned over and sniffed it, wondering for half a second if Scott had lied to him and given him more tequila.

“That bastard gave me water.” Stiles half laughed, setting the overturned mug on a dish rack to dry.

He busied himself with putting on a pot of coffee, taking out a matching set of R2D2 and CP30 Star Wars mugs as he waited.

“Scott! Do you want breakfast?! Or are you going to just avoid my questions again?!” Stiles hollered up at the ceiling.

“I’m good!” Scott’s muffled voice called back over the sound of running water.

Stiles huffed a little, now he wouldn’t be able to slip a laxative into Scott’s eggs as payback for not including him in his little midnight rendezvous.

“What time are we leaving?!” Stiles called up through the ceiling.

“Whenever,” Scott laughed, walking into the kitchen with a towel draped over his shoulders.

“Quit doing that.” Stiles half-glared at Scott, turning away from him to distribute coffee between the two mugs. “Quite ass bastard.”

“Sorry.” Scott shrugged, taking the CP30 mug that Stiles held out to him. “What is this little gold guy anyway? Some video game character?”

“You still haven’t seen Star Wars? Dude, come on.” Stiles poured sugar into his own cup with a heavy hand. “I mean, first you walk through the door this morning covered in crap without so much as an explanation and then you tell me you still haven’t watched a classic! What are you waiting for a reboot?”

Scott rolled his eyes and turned to put creamer in his own cup, hoping to end the discussion.

“Scott! Seriously, when have you not told me things? We share everything! Even that one wet dream about….”

“OKAY! I get it!” Scott laughed uncomfortably and held up his hands in surrender. “Can we just drop this?”

“No. I want to know what’s going on Scott. This is my case, in my town. You get to leave when this is all over, but I’m here.”

Scott sighed, not meeting Stiles’ eyes, and glanced at his watch. “We’d better get going. Don’t want to be late.” He chugged his coffee and almost instantly regretted it.

Stiles side-eyed Scott as the agent hopped around, fanning his tongue. “Fine.”

**\--**

The pair were in Scott’s rental a lot sooner than either would have liked. Scott was expertly dodging Stiles’ questions about where he’d been and reminding him that they’d been meeting with Lydia at her boutique.

“Seriously, where were you? Did you even sleep last night?”

“Yes.” Scott answered simply.

“Scott.”

“I told you I’d take care of some things. You’ve got a lot to deal with. Am I not here to help?”

It slowly dawned on Stiles where Scott had been. “You were tailing Derek Hale?”

“I can handle him. Nothing happened, it was boring.”

“Yet, you were covered in dirt and shit.”

“Blending in.”

“With shit?”

“So. What are you going to ask Lydia?” Scott combated Stiles’ curiosity with a cheery disposition. Scott sighed. “Look I get the pressure, okay. I’m doing a little bit of my own investigating. If it comes to something, I’ll tell you.”

Stiles crossed his arms and turned into the window. He sat in a grumpy sort of silence for the whole five minute ride.

“Okay, dude. I’m going to go find a parking spot. I know you usually go in through the back, but sneaking around right now might not be the best idea, and I think it’s trash day.”

Stiles wanted nothing more than to get out of that car, and it didn’t hit him to question Scott dropping him off until he was out of the car.

A bell dinged from somewhere across the room as Stiles crossed the threshold of Lydia’s shop. Most people around town knew that the store was a front, Lydia’s true passion wasn’t the high end clothes or the organic essential oils and stones that she stocked. She was, however, the type of woman who had her hand in as many pots as she could, dabbling in all her vast interests while she could. Out of the back of her shop, Lydia ran a freelance journal column, an advice website, and was a psychic consultant. How Lydia found the time to do anything other than work was a mystery. Stiles thought the place smelled like a Hollister and usually went through the back, directly into Lydia’s waiting room and office, but thanks to Scott he was walking straight through the heavily perfumed front.

“Stiles?” Lydia’s voice rang through the room, clear as a bell. Stiles jolted and stumbled over a stack of shopping baskets. Lydia stood at the back of the store in a curtained doorway.

“Lydia. Hey.” Stiles waved one hand at her, trying to casually lean against the register counter and not make it look like he just tripped.

She looked at him blankly. “Where’s Scott going?”

“Scott? How’d you…? Nevermind. You’re you. Uh. Scotty’s parking the car.”

Lydia’s lips pursed, showing off her dimples. “Well come on back then.”

“Scott’s not coming in, is he.” Stiles sighed.

Lydia smiled and shook her head. “He just drove by the front door and waved.”

“Right. That son-ov’a-bitch,” Stiles breathed out, his shoulders slumping slightly. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why he was so tense about asking Lydia for help, but was it really too much for him to ask for at least one easy-to-solve case. One with DNA trails, credible witnesses, and security tape footage.

Lydia waved for Stiles to follow her into a set of rooms he was much more familiar with. When Stiles was new to the force he spent a lot of time trying to have a good turn around rate, and with that he spent a lot of time with Lydia, getting her to drop him clues and tell him if he was on the right path whenever he started to get anxious about a minor mystery. She was the Sheriff’s Station’s worst kept secret, but no one really seemed to bother her much unless they really needed the intervention.

Back in these rooms the wallpaper was much crisper and calming, a soft mint color instead of the vibrantly colored shelving units that lined the brick walls of the storefront. Instead of your nose being assaulted, lavender and vanilla subtlety hung in the air.

“Take a seat.”

**\--**

Scott McCall felt only a little remorse for ditching Stiles like that, but his friend needed to face his fears head on and so did Scott. A little late night data base searching the night before had lead him to Peter Hales’ current whereabouts. Beacon Hills County Memorial Hospital. The fact that Peter Hale’s residency in the area coincided with when the murders started set off an alarm in Scott’s head. He wanted, no, he needed to talk to Peter. Stiles would get it, Scott knew that. Stiles had his own wayward cases that hung over his head at times, he knew what it was like to make mistakes, but his criminals weren’t running around still at it. Scott pushed his foot down harder on the gas pedal.

**\--**

Lydia sat behind her desk, typing and answering phone calls. Stiles simply sat there, he had tried to start the conversation several times, but something always stopped him from getting anything out of his mouth and Lydia wasn’t pushing him to talk.

“How about we go get lunch? The Chinese place across the parking lot? You like it there?” Stiles finally forced out, it all sounded unsure to him but his stomach was about to eat itself.  
Lydia hummed and nodded, “sure but I can’t leave the shop till noon.” It was only 10:45. Stiles repressed a groan and sank in his chair. “You know if this is about Allison’s article, I really don’t want to hear it Stiles.”

“T-that’s out?”’

“I think so.” Lydia looked up at Stiles and narrowed her eyes. “That’s not why you’re here?”

“Uh. Sort of?” Stiles squinted at Lydia, trying to figure out where to go from there.

“Stiles.” Lydia pursed her lips and studied his face. Her fingers grazed protectively over a large black gemstone hanging around her neck, nearly hidden beneath the folds of the flowy cardigan she wore.

“You can’t come to me every time you can’t figure out a case.”

Stiles face planted on his side of Lydia’s desk and slowly tilted his head to look at her. “Lydia. This case, this case is really different somehow. We have no leads. Everyone’s looking to me for answers. I’m sure you know that if Allison’s article says what I think it does. About how there aren’t any leads, there’s no progress, people want answers. We don’t have any answers.”

Lydia sighed, eyes unfocused, “Fine. But you still owe me lunch.”

“You got it.” Stiles popped up, bouncing slightly in his seat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of our notes on the term "Outliers" http://tinyurl.com/nmhjdwx


End file.
